Cultural institutions

The Romanian Ministry of Culture is responsible for the support and encouragement of cultural life and cultural institutions throughout the country. In the early years of the communist period, Romania’s cultural institutions were generously supported by the government as it sought to gain prestige and to maintain control of the arts. Later, however, when the Ceaușescu government focused on retiring the country’s international debt, such support diminished considerably. Following the 1989 revolution and the overall decline in the standard of living, Romanians had less discretionary income to spend on cultural activities. Moreover, with only limited government support, the performing arts struggled to find sources of funding in the private sector.

Bucharest is the cultural capital of Romania and is home to numerous theatres, of which the largest is the National Theatre. The city holds an annual theatre festival. Music is central to Bucharest’s cultural life; the city is home to an opera house as well as the George Enescu Philharmonia and the Romanian National Orchestra. Notable museums in Bucharest include the National Museum of Art of Romania (badly damaged by a fire in the 1989 revolution but since reopened), the National History Museum of Romania, the Grigore Antipa National Natural History Museum (named for Romania’s most illustrious naturalist), the Romanian Peasant Museum, and the open-air National Village Museum, which has assembled examples of peasant homes and other traditional buildings from throughout the country. Other large Romanian cities have their own regional history museums. The Brukental Museum in Sibiu (1817) houses the personal art collection and library of Baron Samuel von Brukental. The Museum of Natural History and Archaeology in Constanța has an important collection of Greek and Romanartifacts from the ancient city of Tomis (7th century bce). In addition to subsidizing cultural institutions, the Romanian government awards scholarships and other grants to artists, composers, and writers.

Bucharest is home to the three largest libraries in the country: the National Library of Romania, the Central University Library of the University of Bucharest (damaged during the revolution but since restored), and the Library of the Romanian Academy. The Romanian Academy (founded in 1866 as the Romanian Literary Society) is renowned for preserving the Romanian language and culture and is responsible for coordinating the work of research institutes. The Academy’s seat is in Bucharest, but it also has branches in Iași, Cluj, and Timișoara.

Sports and recreation

The traditional Romanian sport is oina, which is played with a bat and a leather ball and resembles baseball. Football (soccer), however, is by far the country’s most popular sport, and all the big cities have stadiums and teams in the national professional league. The Romanian national team periodically has enjoyed international success, especially in the 1990s, when it was led by Georghe Hagi, one of the era’s finest European players. In general, Romanians participate in sports and recreation through membership in clubs, the most popular being dedicated to cycling, football, handball, tennis, rugby, and martial arts. Basketball, volleyball, handball, and skating are also popular.

Romania’s first Olympic appearance was at the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France, and it was the only Warsaw Pact country to attend the boycotted 1984 Los Angeles Games. Romanian women have excelled in gymnastics, most notably Nadia Comăneci, who earned six medals at the 1974 Montreal Games, and Romanian men and women have performed well in various rowing events. Among the country’s other legendary athletes are Iolanda Balas, who dominated the women’s high jump during the late 1950s and the ’60s, and tennis player Ilie Nastase.

Romania’s busiest sporting and recreational regions are in the Carpathian Mountains and along the Black Sea coast. In summer, mountain areas attract rock climbers and hikers, and in winter they draw skiers and snowboarders. On the coast, the Danube delta attracts bird-watchers, and beaches are crowded during warm weather.

Media and publishing

Following the revolution, there was a rapid expansion of media representing a variety of regional and political interests. The economic decline of the 1990s caused many publications to cease production. Among Romania’s leading newspapers are Libertatea (“Freedom”) and Jurnalul Naţional (“National Journal”), both of which are published in Bucharest. Monitorul Oficial (“Official Monitor”) is the government newspaper. In-depth coverage of political news can be found in Evenimentul Zilei (“Events of the Day”). Adevărul (“The Truth”) replaced the former Communist Party paper in 1990. Numerous privately owned publishing houses emerged after 1990, but many became relatively inactive during the economic downturn, issuing only an occasional title. Publishing rebounded in the early 21st century but only to about one-fifth of its former level.

The Romanian Press Agency, known by its foreign acronym Rompres, is the country’s official news service. Privately owned Media Fax was launched in 1991. There are also foreign news agencies that are based in Bucharest. Since the 1990s, state-run Romanian Radio and Television has faced competition from dozens of private radio and television channels. One of the most successful television outlets is PRO-TV, which airs international programs.

On the whole, Romanian media has received widespread criticism for being overly influenced by the government, and, indeed, there have been occasional incidents of politically motivated prosecution of journalists. The constitution upholds freedom of expression but prohibits defamation of the country and the government.

Antiquity

The Carpathian-Danube region in which the Romanian ethnic community evolved was settled about 2000 bce by migratory Indo-Europeans who intermingled with native Neolithic (New Stone Age) peoples to form the Thracians. When Ionians and Dorians settled on the western shore of the Black Sea in the 7th century bce, the Thracians’ descendants came into contact with the Greek world. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century bce, called these people Getae (Getians). Together with kindred tribes, known later to the Romans as Dacians, who lived in the mountains north of the Danubian Plain and in the Transylvanian Basin, the Getae developed a distinct society and culture by the second half of the 4th century bce.

The expansion of Rome into the Balkan Peninsula in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bce decisively affected the evolution of the Geto-Dacians. To oppose the Roman advance, they revived their old tribal union under the leadership of Burebista (reigned 82–44 bce). From its centre in the southern Carpathians, this union stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Balkan Mountains to Bohemia. It posed such a threat to Rome’s ascendancy in the peninsula that Julius Caesar was preparing to undertake a major campaign against the Geto-Dacians when he was assassinated in 44 bce. In the same year, Burebista was also assassinated, by disgruntled tribal chiefs who opposed his centralizing rule. His imposing tribal union disappeared with him.

The final showdown between Rome and the Geto-Dacians came at the beginning of the 2nd century ce. By that time the Geto-Dacians had reconstituted a powerful state that, under their resourceful ruler, Decebalus, threatened Rome’s Danubian frontier. Geto-Dacian civilization was at its height, but its flourishing economy, prosperous cities, and bustling trade throughout southeastern Europe posed as great a challenge as its army to Rome’s ambitions in the region. To end the danger, the emperor Trajan mounted two campaigns between 101 and 106 ce to force Decebalus into submission. The Romans triumphed, and, with his state in ruin, Decebalus committed suicide.

For more than a century and a half the Transylvanian Basin and the plain to the south constituted the Roman province of Dacia. Officials, soldiers, and merchants from all over the Roman world settled alongside the native Dacians. Although the population was ethnically diverse, Roman administration, numerous cities, and the Latin language brought about intense Romanization and rapid integration into the empire. Dacia, in turn, supplied the empire with grain and precious metals.

The constant pressure of migratory peoples on the long, exposed boundaries of Dacia led the emperor Aurelian to withdraw the Roman army and administration in 271–275. The upper classes and many urban dwellers followed, but the majority of the population, who lived in the countryside and were engaged in agriculture, stayed behind. Once again, the Danube became the frontier of the empire, although written and archaeological evidence points to continued trade and to the maintenance of military bases on the north bank of the river until the 6th century. In addition, during this period there was an intensified propagation of Christianity, which had been only sporadically present in old Dacia.

The fate of the Romanized, or Daco-Roman, population north of the Danube after Aurelian’s withdrawal has been a subject of great controversy. Many scholars, especially Hungarians, argue that Romanization in Dacia was, in fact, modest and that the later Romanian population living north of the Carpathians was not native to the region but migrated there from south of the Danube. Other scholars, including the majority of Romanians, insist that a substantial Romanized population maintained itself continuously in old Dacia and that the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people occurred precisely there. The account that follows expands upon the latter interpretation.

For nearly eight centuries after the withdrawal of the Roman administration and army, Dacia was overrun by a series of migratory peoples. The earliest of them—the Visigoths (275–376), the Huns (end of the 4th century to 454), and the Germanic Gepidae (454–567)—had little impact on the Daco-Roman population. But the Avars’ defeat of the Gepidae in 567 opened the way for a massive advance of Slavs into Dacia. Together with the Avars, the Slavs then broke through the Danube frontier of the Byzantine Empire in 602 and occupied much of the Balkan Peninsula. Now, for the first time since Trajan’s conquest, Dacia was cut off from the Roman (Byzantine) world.

The Slavs achieved political and social preeminence in Dacia in the 8th century, but even then they were undergoing assimilation by the more numerous Daco-Romans. Their position was enhanced in the 9th century when the rulers of the first Bulgarian empire extended their control over Dacia following Charlemagne’s crushing defeat of the Avars in 791–796. Local Slav chiefs apparently entered into a vassal relationship with the Bulgarian tsars, who, after the conversion of Boris I to Christianity in 864, served as religious and cultural intermediaries between Dacia and the Byzantine Empire.